We Are Avon
We Are Avon is an emerging web of active producers, farms, organizations and diverse communities collaborating to build better local food systems for all.
This is a grassroots movement to provide healthy and affordable food resilience for this region whilst also regenerating the communities, lands and waters of the Avon catchment area.
Anchoring food and land as powerful frames for reconnecting people to place, this project aims to re-identify humans as regenerators and solutionists to the climate and nature crisis we collectively face.
Join our monthly meet-ups on zoom:First Thursday of every month 8-9.30pm
This is a chance to hear movement updates, contribute ideas and meet like-minded people.
Email weareavon@outlook.com if you want to join or support in any way - all are very welcome!
The Avon is our valley, our home, our past and our future. If we can protect and regenerate these lands and waters together as a community of reciprocity then a beautiful future is possible for many generations to come. Healthy soil, food sovereignty, abundant wildlife and clean rivers can be our legacy.
This catchment area and bioregion marks the original boundaries for the old county of Avon, 554,000 acres surrounding the Avon River. One of our core project supporters, West Of England Combined Authority, still use these land boundaries today, so it is also a pragmatic unitary boundary with governance, maps and data available for the work we need to do.
The name of this project also serves to indicate a return to relationship and responsibility; We are the valley, belonging to place, entering reciprocal symbiosis, the first steps on a long pilgrimage back to indigeneity, but also forward into the emergent culture of regeneration.
At it’s core, this project is about a renewed place-based ‘Avon identity’ and rootedness for communities of practice, bridging the diverse actors needed to transform our lands and waters, minds and hearts.
Uniting small-scale regenerative producers to give greater reach and impact in localised food systems, through a producer co-op and a regional Food Hub.
Establishing a non-profit educational organisation providing the training, advocacy and system/policy level voice for landworkers in the Avon valley bioregion. Training new growers and stewards whilst creating the enabling conditions for them to establish & flourish.
Securing access to parcels of land for community stewardship, new entrant farmers, and regenerative farming. Aiming to remove barriers to land access so we can grow the food, fuels and fibres for communities of resilience in the Avon bioregion.
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Without the diversified access to land for producers and communities, bioregional regeneration will be limited to top-down policy (or lack-of), Big Agriculture's business decisions and corporate investment.
River Avon Regeneration
Creating a regional movement for river regeneration: raising awareness, stopping the harm, riparian restoration, a river charter/vision with stakeholders and supporting the transition to a clean and abundant river Avon.
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We envision a clean and healthy river and bioregion for all stakeholders. Thousands of users enjoy and depend upon the river Avon from which is currently polluted largely by unsustainable agricultural practices and profit-based water companies. From boaters to fishermen to swimmers and walkers, there is a stronger than ever momentous call to protect our Avon. River restoration is inseparable from food, land and community action.
